Autumn in Maine is, in my opinion, the best season of the year. The temperature is still warm but not sweltering, and the foliage is spectacular. A harsh, New England winter still feels at arm's length. I do have some trepidation, however, and that is because this season is also when my son has his birthday.

Don't get me wrong, I love to celebrate the day my only child was born, and we all know birthdays are as important as Christmas in the children's short list of important dates right next to Halloween and, quite frankly, any other day where there is unfettered access to gifts and large amounts of sugar.

The downward slide started with my son's first birthday. I baked his birthday cake entirely out of regurgitated cheerios and sugar-free applesauce, and to be truthful it was more like a wrap party for my year-long, one-woman show featuring performances about gloating teapots, masochistic spiders and at least 15 different characters on a goddamn school bus that would never get to its destination

Ever since then, the well-intentioned birthday parties have seemed to raise the bar every year to a level that you suspect is unsustainable past the age of 12. You begin to realize you have trapped yourself in a corner with Martha Stewart paint in 'What Was I F**king Thinking Blue' and the pressure is overwhelming to create another event every year with your own bare, bloody, frosting covered hands that is somehow worthy of your love for your child.

To add to the difficulty and despair, the children's parties are more complicated to throw now. At the age of 8, I am now officially at the level where birthdays are for all intents and purposes free babysitting. I remember watching this phenomenon a couple of years ago and anticipating the day when it would be myself watching from the doorway as mothers opened the minivan door, asked their kids to tuck and roll out of the moving vehicle, cheerfully wave and then peel off to TJ MAXX for a couple of hours of uninterrupted shopping while their kid trashed my house like a drunken rock star. Granted, there's no longer the danger of anyone eating your Chanel lip gloss or accidentally pooping on the lawn, but the kids are actually big enough now that two medium sized ones could arguably take you down during an unsupervised sugar binge.

I've been through the Fire Engine Birthday, the Train Birthday, the Skyscraper Birthday and the Mt. Everest Birthday. These were all fairly easy interests to plan a small birthday around. This year, my son is obsessed with Abraham Lincoln, which means that somehow I have to figure out how to make a pizza shaped like the Constitution and find a piñata that looks like John Wilkes Booth, filled with the suffering and anguish of five generations of oppressed slaves. Unless I can successfully camouflage a Bob the Builder piñata with a sharpie mustache and a hastily crafted waistcoat and a papier mâché pistol, I'm pretty sure there are going to be a whole bunch of second-graders beating the crap out of something that looks like Gene Shalit.

It's an understandable instinct to bend over backwards to be the perfect mom or dad on this day, whether you grew up with no such party yourself, or if your own mother was the kind of person, as mine was, who baked individual sailboat cakes with personalized spinnakers floating on a private bay of lime Jello. Often you kill yourself with what ends up being considerable expense and effort, and the irony is that the only marathon finish line you are crossing is the one only you have set for yourself. And you're the only runner.

At the end of the day, once the saltwater taffy and Civil War paraphernalia that came out of Gene Shalit's tattered ass settles, isn't your child is just happy to have a party at all? I do remember the sailboat cakes, but what I remember the most was my mother being there, loving me unconditionally, and always having my birthday be a special day for me and my friends. I had no clue how much time she had spent on those damn sailboats and the truth i,s I would have been just as happy if she had handed me a can of Betty Crocker frosting and a spoon. Because I already knew she loved me.

With some cake and some enthusiastic kids, a party will be an unmitigated success wherever it is. Isn't that a successful recipe for a party at any age? It will be over before you can declare your house has divided and fallen, and before you know it your child will be 13 and it will be just a matter of time before they wouldn't be caught dead at one of your parties anyway.

So this year, in the somewhat misappropriated words of Abraham Lincoln, I am going to "do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end." Whatever I am, I'll try to be a good one.

This year, I'm outsourcing my cupcakes to Laugh Loud Smile Big. Maybe we'll have the party at the park. I'm going to enjoy the day, not take it too seriously and not break the bank having it. Because this year I get to give out pennies in the goodie bags.

Anneli Skaar is a graphic designer living and working Camden who spends a significant amount of her time trying to establish a functional balance between single motherhood, career and sanity.

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